The Real Cost of Selling Farm Products Online: A Platform Comparison for Small Growers

When a farm starts selling online, the pricing page of every platform tells a simple story: here’s the monthly fee, here’s the transaction rate, sign up today. The actual cost is never that simple.

Barn2Door’s advertised rate doesn’t mention the 2% merchant support fee or the setup fee you pay before selling a single item. Local Line’s CSA features are an add-on that pushes the monthly bill past $120. And even the cheapest platforms hide trade-offs that aren’t on the pricing page.

I built a comparison framework to answer one question: if a small farm does $5,000 per month in online sales, what does each platform actually cost per year, including monthly fees, transaction fees, app costs, and hidden charges?

What every platform charges that nobody talks about

Before comparing platforms, it’s worth understanding the fees that are universal and the fees that vary.

Credit card processing is unavoidable. Every online sale processed by credit card costs approximately 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction through Stripe. This is true regardless of platform. When a customer pays $50 for a CSA share, approximately $1.75 goes to payment processing. No farm e-commerce platform has found a way around this — it’s the cost of accepting cards.

The meaningful comparison is everything on top of card processing: monthly subscription fees, platform transaction fees (sometimes called “commission” or “merchant support fees”), required add-ons for farm-specific features, and setup or onboarding costs.

Platform transaction fees are the cost that sneaks up on you. Some platforms charge a percentage on top of credit card processing. Barn2Door adds a 2% “merchant support fee” that isn’t prominently disclosed during signup. Shopify charges a 2% surcharge if you use any payment processor other than Shopify Payments. These percentages seem small until you calculate the annual impact at real volume.

App and add-on costs are the Shopify variable. Shopify’s base platform doesn’t include subscription management, delivery zone logic, harvest lists, or CSA-specific tools. You can add subscriptions through apps — Seal Subscriptions is free, Recharge starts at $25/month. But farm-specific workflows like delivery zones and seasonal availability don’t have clean app solutions. The real cost of Shopify apps isn’t the monthly fee. It’s the time spent managing and troubleshooting integrations between tools that weren’t designed to work together.

The comparison at $5,000 monthly revenue

This is a realistic revenue level for a small farm selling CSA shares, farmers’ market pre-orders, and online add-ons. At this volume, you’re processing roughly 100 to 200 transactions per month.

I’m calculating total annual cost including: platform subscription, platform transaction fees (not card processing), and required add-ons for farm-specific features like subscriptions and delivery management. Card processing (2.9% + 30¢) is excluded because it’s identical across platforms.

Squarespace Core: $348 per year. Squarespace renamed its plans in 2025 — the ecommerce-capable plan is now called “Core” at $29/month ($348/year) with annual billing. No platform transaction fee. Squarespace now includes subscription/recurring payment tools on all plans, including Basic ($16/month). If your farm just needs a clean online store with basic subscription support, Squarespace is a legitimate option at a low price. The gap: Squarespace has no concept of delivery zones, pickup locations, harvest lists, or seasonal availability. You’ll manage those workflows manually or not at all.

Shopify Basic: $348–648 per year. Shopify Basic is $29/month with annual billing ($348/year). No platform transaction fee if using Shopify Payments. Subscription management requires an app — Seal Subscriptions is free, Recharge starts at $25/month. A realistic farm setup: $29/month base + $0–25/month for subscriptions = $348–648/year. Shopify is a capable platform with a massive ecosystem. The trade-off: farm-specific features (delivery zones, seasonal inventory, harvest lists, pickup scheduling) either don’t exist as apps or require stitching together multiple tools that weren’t designed to work together.

GrazeCart Starter: $828 per year. $69/month ($828/year) with no platform transaction fee. Built for farm e-commerce with subscription support included. The catch: GrazeCart is focused on meat and protein operations. Flower farms and diversified vegetable operations find the workflows less intuitive. The interface reflects its livestock roots.

Local Line Core: $1,476 per year. $99/month ($1,188/year) for the Core plan, which includes the online store and basic order management. CSA subscriptions require the add-on at $24/month ($288/year). No platform transaction fee. Total: $1,476. Local Line is the most popular platform among CSA farms that have graduated from spreadsheets, but it explicitly notes its CSA tools may not suit farms that rely heavily on customizable box-builder features.

Barn2Door: $2,988+ per year. Published pricing starts at $99/month for the Starter plan ($1,188/year). But Barn2Door also charges a 2% “merchant support fee” on all transactions — at $60K annual revenue, that’s $1,200/year. Setup fees are assessed upfront, reportedly in the hundreds of dollars, though exact amounts vary. And BBB reviews from farmers describe aggressive sales practices and features that don’t match what was promised during the pitch. Conservative total: $2,988 per year, not counting the setup fee.

Picket Standard: $588 per year. $49/month ($588/year) with no service fee. Every farm feature included: subscriptions, delivery zones, harvest lists, member communication tools, and fully customizable landing pages. No apps to install. No integration points to maintain. This is the plan most working farms will use.

Picket Free: $1,200 per year. No monthly fee. A 2% service fee on transactions — at $60K annual revenue, that’s $1,200/year. All the same features as Standard, with lower limits (15 products, 30 orders/month). Free is designed for farms just getting started, where paying nothing upfront matters more than optimizing annual cost. Once you’re consistently doing $2,450 or more per month, switching to Standard saves money.

Picket Pro: $1,188 per year. $99/month ($1,188/year) with no service fee. Same as Standard, but with no limits at all — unlimited products, orders, subscriptions, delivery zones, team seats, and storage. Plus priority support and custom domains. Pro isn’t about saving on fees (Standard has no fee either). It’s for farms that outgrow Standard’s limits.

What the numbers look like at $10,000 monthly revenue

As farms grow, the gap between platforms with percentage fees and those without gets wider. But so does the gap between what general-purpose platforms include and what farms actually need.

At $120,000 in annual revenue, Barn2Door’s 2% merchant support fee alone costs $2,400 per year, on top of the $1,188 subscription. Total: $3,588+. Shopify with apps: roughly $648 to $948 depending on app stack. Squarespace: $348 (flat). Local Line: $1,476 (flat). GrazeCart: $828 (flat). Picket Free: $2,400 (this is where the 2% fee hurts — Free isn’t designed for this volume).

Here’s where Picket’s tiers matter: a farm doing $10,000/month is processing 200 to 400 orders per month and likely selling 40 or more products. That’s well past Standard’s limits of 100 orders/month and 30 products. Picket Standard: $588 (flat, but you’d hit the order cap by mid-month). Picket Pro: $1,188 (flat, no limits). At this volume, Pro isn’t optional — it’s the tier that fits.

At $1,188/year, Picket Pro is still cheaper than Local Line ($1,476) and a fraction of Barn2Door ($3,588+). It costs more than Shopify or Squarespace, but those platforms don’t include delivery zones, subscription management, seasonal availability, harvest lists, or pickup scheduling. You’d spend the difference in time stitching together apps that weren’t designed for each other.

The pattern: general-purpose platforms (Squarespace, Shopify) have the lowest sticker price at every revenue level. Farm-specific platforms cost more because they include the workflows farms actually need. The question is whether you want to build your farm’s operations from parts or use something purpose-built.

On Picket specifically, the Free tier makes sense up to about $2,450/month in sales. Standard is the sweet spot for farms doing $2,500 to $5,000/month. Above that, most farms outgrow Standard’s order and product limits and move to Pro.

What the spreadsheet doesn’t capture

Cost per year is the easy comparison. The harder comparison is what each platform costs in time.

A farmer on Shopify who needs delivery zones and seasonal inventory ends up with a stack of apps that don’t know about each other. When one updates and breaks another, the farmer becomes an unpaid QA engineer. The subscription app works fine. The integration between it and everything else is where the time goes.

A farmer on Squarespace has subscription tools built in now, but no concept of delivery zones, pickup locations, or harvest-based availability. Those workflows happen in spreadsheets, text messages, and memory. The platform cost is low. The operational overhead is not.

A farmer on Barn2Door who was promised features during the sales process that don’t exist (which BBB reviews describe in detail) loses something harder to quantify: trust in the platform and confidence in their own decision-making.

The cheapest platform on paper isn’t always the cheapest in practice. What matters is how much manual work it eliminates and whether it surprises you with fees six months in.

How to evaluate for your specific farm

Every farm’s math is different. Here’s a framework for figuring out your actual cost.

Start with your realistic annual online revenue. Not your hope — your realistic expectation for the next 12 months. A 30-member flower CSA at $30/bouquet biweekly for 16 weeks is about $7,200. Add farmers’ market pre-orders and a la carte online sales and you might be at $12,000 to $15,000.

List the features you actually need. Subscription management. An online store. Delivery zones or pickup locations. Member communication. Inventory tracking. Packing lists. Be specific — “subscription management” means different things on different platforms. Can members skip weeks? Change pickup locations? Pay in installments? Manage their own account?

Calculate total annual cost for each platform at your revenue level. Include the subscription, any percentage fees, required add-ons, and setup costs. Use the actual revenue number, not the platform’s example with a conveniently round $100,000.

Estimate the labor cost of gaps. If a platform doesn’t include subscription management, how many hours per month will you spend managing it manually? If it doesn’t send pickup reminders, how many no-shows will you absorb? These costs are real even though they don’t show up on an invoice.

Ask about data portability. Can you export your member list, order history, and product catalog if you decide to leave? After Harvie’s shutdown displaced 150 farms overnight, this question should be part of every platform evaluation. If the answer is vague, that’s your answer.

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Picket is built for small growers who are tired of overpaying for features they don’t use or stitching together tools that don’t talk to each other. We publish our pricing because we think transparency builds trust. If you want to see how the math works for your specific farm, reach out at eric@mypicket.app.